Without me doing anything but read it, Picking up the Pieces wove a healing blanket around my saddest, fearful places. There are no platitudes here, and no subtle push to feel better. There’s the steady, compassionate beat of a heart who knows grief; a soft chorus of voices that feels like a hand of support at my back; and prompts that make darkness feel that much less bleak. Picking up the Pieces, for me, is a beautiful, healing dawn. - Kristin Noelle, Trust Tending

I wanted you to know that I read Picking Up the Pieces this weekend and I wept – it is so beautiful. Gorgeous writing, and I love the way you have structured it, with concrete suggestions. Your contributors are all lovely too. I hope it doesn’t trivialize your own sorrow to say that I feel like so much of it resonated even though I haven’t been recently through an episode of sharp grief. It made me think, in fact, about how universal grief is, in varying intensities and volumes, of course. Thank you so much for sharing your work. – Lindsey Mead, A Design So Vast

Your Picking Up the Pieces Book is so magical and gorgeous. It brings me peace and comfort and helps me connect to my own broken heart – that place where I am
most me. – Pamela Hunt, Walking On My Hands

It is written with such skill in capturing bald honesty …….. no pretense of preachy-knowingness as we get with so many good intentioned, self-help works. The joy (as Rumi put it) and personal freedom from this grieving process was artfully painted-with-words page after page. I only read 5 or 6 pages when I had enough. It was as if I was savoring a rich, indescribably delectable dish that you save for later because you can’t handle anymore of a good thing, and you want to make it last as long as you can. – Tim H.

These are just a few words to express my deepest gratitude to you for sharing this so generously with the world, I feel it is like an oyster with such a beautiful and precious pearl inside of it, I am so moved as I read it, and words are too small to say what I feel... – Sophia Style, childbirth and menstrual cycle educator, Spain.

I found Picking Up The Pieces delivered a frank and truthful account of the personal process of grief. As I read along I could feel my own fear of losing a loved one rise up and this scared me. I found myself not being able to finish some stories at first because I didn’t want to even think about something like this happening to me. I kept thinking, “grief is a reality, and one day I will encounter it…will I be able to get through it?” I am grateful to Alana for having the courage to compile such a powerful guide for those experiencing grief now and for those who will experience it in the future. – C.W. graduate student at Adler School of Professional Psychology

14 Responses to Picking Up the Pieces guide

Alana, oftentimes I refer to your words and Benjamin and your life in this truly authentic conversations I have been having with new people. I have found myself sharing how your spirit and Benjamin’s has opened so many portals for me and others – to appreciate our god-given right to have a relationship with grief, to love and let go of our selves in order to love even more deeply, to make space for our mourning and that of others – none of which exist in our fabrication of time, but unfolds miraculously in the expansion of our minds and hearts and connections with those we choose to care for and be cared by. I have never witnessed someone walk the walk so well, Alana, maybe it is because you chose to dance it, even shackled you kept dancing. I don’t know how – but I swam in your wake, waded like Ailey’s Revelations. How your words combine dance, music and emotion. Swaying me through my unowned grief. Feeling life creeping towards the cracks, earning the right to sunshine, air and moisture.
Alana, you have found a way to share strength and weakness with such grace and literacy – I have felt more human through your words.
As much as I hunger to hear the sound of my hands running over a smooth dust jacket, I bow and “Namaste” to this publishing. COngratulations and Thank you!

After three miscarriages and moving through a grief I had never been prepared for I now sit listening to the sounds of my three children who I say carry the souls of each of my previous losses.

I am slowly making my way through the pages and the stories and am so touched by the work and your bringing a voice to grief, which we would so rather not talk about because it is uncomfortable. When I was in the early stages of loss I used to crave the open discussion of loss and moving on.

I also have always said that the loss I felt also opened up depth to love more, laugh more and feel more.